Last issue we invited you to let off steam via our new feature "Sound Off!". Well, several of you e-mailed us with strong opinions on various issues related to meetings and conferences (some we couldn't publish, but enlightening all the same!), but we've chosen this rant from a PA in Eastbourne. She would rather remain nameless so we'll just call her Mystery Voice A.

Mystery Voice A works as a PA/EA to a board of eight directors at a large manufacturing firm, and she tells us about what really rattles her cage when it comes to conference time:

"We have eight directors, and I work for all of them. Some need a lot of my time; others are more independent. But the time when they ALL need my help is the annual conference, which I organise and which is usually held in the summer.

They are all expected to produce PowerPoint presentations for this event - and I'm the only person on staff who knows how to put together PowerPoint presentations. In theory, that's great, as it means I have a valuable and unique skill. In practice, come conference time, I wish I'd never heard of PowerPoint!

I've been caught out in the past, with having all eight of them walk into my office a couple of days before the event (when I've really got NOTHING else to do, have I!) and leave a pile of scratchy, scribbled notes on my desk, "for my presentation". Nightmare!

So last year I decided to take them in hand, and produced a timetable for the presentations to be drafted, given to me, first drafts approved or amended, and then final versions approved. I gave myself three weeks to do them all - which I thought would be plenty.

What happened? It was worse than usual!! No-one was ready to put their presentation together three weeks before the event. Everyone thought I could be "getting on with the others" while waiting for theirs. They all wanted to talk to each other to find out who was saying what. And some got quite cross with me for putting pressure on them so early! I didn't make any friends by trying to push them to meet my schedule.

There was just one director, who actually made an effort and got something to me to draft up. But overall, I spent more time chasing and chasing the presentations, and battling with increasingly ridiculous excuses, than I did actually putting the presentations together. They still all came to me in the last few days before the conference.

And the one whose presentation I drafted up early? Ah, yes! He didn't actually look at it until the day before the conference, only to decide he'd changed his mind about whole sections of it, and it needed re-working. So guess who was in the office until 8.00pm that evening, re-working it?!

I give up - maybe the answer is eight individual PowerPoint training courses, so they can do their own!"

What do you think of Mystery Voice A's tirade? Do you agree with her rant, do you think it's nonsense, or do you think she's partly right?

And to send your Sound Off! to us, just email to express@deskdemon.com. Send us no more than 300 words, your name and firm (or remain anonymous) and we'll pick the best to publish.